feminist blogs

Yeah, that's him.

Torch-bearer Andrew Michael, left, holds up his finger with a small Team Tibet tag while carrying the Olympic torch along with Bonnie Bobbit, right, Wednesday, April 9, 2008 during the Torch Relay in San Francisco. The Olympic torch played hide and seek with thousands of demonstrators and spectators crowding the city's waterfront Wednesday before being spirited away without even a formal goodbye on its symbolic stop in the United States. (AP Photo/Carlos Avila Gonzalez, Pool)

It’s like a perfect storm of right-wing policies: The War on Drugs, women’s liberation by way of imperialism, and “freedom” at the barrel of a gun.

Khalida’s father says she’s 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can’t keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can’t keep her much longer. Khalida’s father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It’s the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he’s losing far more than money. “I never imagined I’d have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter,” says Shah.

The vast majority of the world’s opiates originate in Afghanistan. To fight drug production, the solution has been to target individual farmers and destroy their crops — without offering them any other option for survival. And the U.S. keeps mucking it up. We offered farmers other crops (wheat, etc), but once it was grown there weren’t enough buyers (I guess we didn’t think that far ahead).

And it’s not just farmers who are suffering because of these policies — it’s girls.

Angiza Afridi, 28, has spent much of the past year interviewing more than 100 families about opium weddings in two of Nangarhar’s 22 districts. The schoolteacher and local TV reporter already had firsthand knowledge of the tragedy. Five years ago one of her younger aunts, then 16, was forced to marry a 55-year-old man to pay off an older uncle’s opium debt, and three years ago an 8-year-old cousin was also given in marriage to make good on a drug loan. “This practice of marrying daughters to cover debts is becoming a bad habit,” says Afridi.

Even so, the results of her survey shocked her. In the two districts she studied, approximately half the new brides had been given in marriage to repay opium debts. The new brides included children as young as 5 years old; until they’re old enough to consummate their marriages, they mostly work as household servants for their in-laws. “These poor girls have no future,” she says. The worst of it may be the suicides. Afridi learned of one 15-year-old opium bride who poisoned herself on her wedding day late last year and an 11-year-old who took a fatal dose of opium around the same time. Her new in-laws were refusing to let her visit her parents.

Gul Ghoti is on her first visit home since her wedding six months ago. She says it’s a relief to be back with her father and mother in their two-room mud-and-brick house, if only temporarily. “My heart is still with my parents, brothers and sisters,” she says. “Only my body is with my husband’s family.” She says she personally knows of two opium brides who killed themselves. “One of the girls had been badly beaten by her husband’s brother, the other by her husband,” she says. Ghoti says she’s considered suicide, too, but Islam stopped her. “I pray that God doesn’t give me a daughter if she ends up like me.”

The life expectancy for adults in Afghanistan is 43. Almost half of all children are not enrolled in primary school. Only eight percent of girls attend secondary school. More than half of all children under 5 are suffering from moderate to severe stunting. Only 34 percent of people in Afghanistan have access to adequate sanitation facilities. For every 100 people in Afghanistan, 5 have a phone. One has internet access. Women in Afghanistan have a 1 in 8 lifetime risk of maternal death. (By contrast: The rate in neighboring Pakistan is 1 in 74; the rate in Sweden is in in 17,400).

Thanks to Miss Sarajevo for the link.

This kind of out-of-control globalization, wherein wealthier women are able to rent the wombs of poorer ones, makes me extremely uncomfortable.

I’m certainly sympathetic to the plight of couples who can’t conceive for whatever reason. And it certainly makes sense for women to voluntarily carry someone else’s pregnancy if it means making a lot of money. But I think it’s possible to be skeptical of this situation without passing judgment on the people involved in it, most of whom are doing the best that they can in tough circumstances.

An article published in The Times of India in February questioned how such a law would be enforced: “In a country crippled by abject poverty,” it asked, “how will the government body guarantee that women will not agree to surrogacy just to be able to eat two square meals a day?”

One could argue that surrogates are simply providing a service like any other. But I’m not sure that we want to turn reproduction into a service industry. The inequalities here are so stark — and the carrot of thousands of dollars so tempting for women in a country with astounding poverty rates — that writing if off as purely business is inadequate.

“Surrogates do it to give their children a better education, to buy a home, to start up a small business, a shop,” Dr. Kadam said. “This is as much money as they could earn in maybe three years. I really don’t think that this is exploiting the women. I feel it is two people who are helping out each other.”

Mr. Gher agreed. “You cannot ignore the discrepancies between Indian poverty and Western wealth,” he said. “We try our best not to abuse this power. Part of our choice to come here was the idea that there was an opportunity to help someone in India.”

In the Mumbai clinic, it is clear that an exchange between rich and poor is under way. On some contracts, the thumbprint of an illiterate surrogate stands out against the clients’ signatures.

Thoughts?

-87: The percentage of Afghan women who report suffering physical abuse, half of which is sexual.
-60: The percentage of marriages in Afghanistan that are forced.
-57: The percentage of Afghan brides who are under the age of 16.
-88: The illiteracy rate amongst Afghan women.
-5: The percentage of Afghan girls attending secondary school.
-1 in 9: The number of women in Afghanistan who die in childbirth — that’s the highest in the world, alongside Sierra Leone.
-1 Million: The number of Afghan widows who have no rights, including no right to work — leaving them to beg on the street.
-£800 to £2,000: The price of a child bride if Afghanistan.

And Afghanistan is the only country where the suicide rate is higher for women than for men.

Just a few things to think about today, and every time you hear politicians talk about how we “liberated” Afghanistan and Afghan women.

Women in the Philippines, a heavily Catholic country with strong “pro-life” laws, are agitating for birth control access. They’re arguing that being unable to plan their families is having “a devastating effect on their lives … causing unwanted pregnancies, pushing them further into poverty and harming their health and wellbeing.” And what does a “pro-life” country like the Philippines look like?

The policy has hit poorest people the hardest, they say, forcing people to choose between a packet of pills or food for their families.

Several of the petitioners have had many more children than they wanted - some at the expense of their health - because they could not afford to pay for contraception.

The policy also exposed women to violence from husbands who did not want to abstain from sex, the rights groups found in an earlier report, and meant more women were resorting to illegal and unsafe abortions.

Mr Atienza is no longer mayor - he is now secretary for the Department of Environment - and his replacement Alfredo Lim is currently looking at the issue.

But EO 003 remains in place and there are no plans to start providing free contraceptives again - not even condoms for sex workers.

Unsurprisingly, divorce is also illegal in the Philippines. Almost 40 percent of men in the Philippines admit to beating up their wives. Between 1.8 to 3.2 million children in the Philippines are exposed to domestic violence. The lack of access to contraception and the unavailability of divorce means that many Filipina women are utterly trapped — which is exactly where “pro-life” groups think women should be.

Oh the things you find in trackbacks.

Dan writes about “the battle of the Jills,” linking to my little throw-down with anti-choice blogger Jill Stanek. He links to this post about the urban legend racist myth that Chinese people eat babies, which eventually leads back to a post by Jill Stanek titled, and I shit you not, “Sweet and Sour Fetus: Chinese Cannibalism.” (Warning: Video that, though I didn’t watch it, I assume is graphic).

Yes, Jill Stanek has learned that the Chinese eat babies. And this is the fault of the pro-choice movement, because “if one is “pro-choice” and denies that preborn humans are human, there is nothing wrong with this whatsoever. It can’t even be considered cannibalism.”

Interestingly, Stanek has argued that the pro-life movement is not racist. I’m sure she’d take issue with any accusation of racism here. But I’m going to do it anyway: This is a racist myth. Jill, you are perpetuating it. I’m hoping that you’re perpetuating it because of your fantastic combination of ignorance and zealotry, but I don’t have that kind of faith in you. Unless you’re a complete moron — which you may actually be — I have a hard time believing that you don’t know the history of these kinds of myths. I have a hard time believing that you’re gullible enough to believe this.

Chinese people do not eat babies. Your Chinese neighbor is not going to steal your cat and eat it, either (or was the scare about dogs?). The Chinese are not going to partner with those scary Muslims to take us over, and no, you are not Noah; you’re more like the guy in the diaper and the cowboy hat standing in Times Square with a “The End Is Near!” sign.

Last time I wrote about Stanek, there were some questions about whether we should be giving her attention at all. If she were just some random crazy, I would say no. But she happens to be a relatively widely-read crazy, and she was on the front lines trying to shut down the Aurora Planned Parenthood. She has ties to some of the ugliest (but most influential) anti-choicers out there. She attends anti-choice bill signings at the invite of the President. She has a widely-read column and a fairly popular blog. She has testified before a House committee. She has been named one of the most influential anti-choicers in the country. So this isn’t small beans; this isn’t cherry-picking one marginalized nutbag. This is a woman who is at the heart of the anti-choice movement. And these are the racist lies that she chooses to perpetuate in the name of “life.”

Jill, I do hope that you’ll retract the story in big, huge letters at the top of your post. But I won’t hold my breath.

The first female leader of Pakistan has was killed on Thursday. She was 54. More than a dozen bystanders were killed with her.

Bhutto was certainly a polarizing figure, but however justified criticisms of corruption, hypocrisy and politicking may be, the fact remains that Bhutto was a liberal, secular leader and a strong, intelligent and courageous woman who led her country two times and spoke out against the current regime. And it’s a shame she’s gone.

It remains to be seen how this will impact the future of Pakistan. I hope it serves as a wake-up call that lots of things need to change, but I suspect it will do just the opposite. As one commenter at Pakistaniat says:

As long as Pakistan can only have change brought about by individuals, Pakistan will not change. What we need are institutions - and the political parties should not be immune from this requirement. The parties need to be depositories of certain ideals and policies, that their elected leadership can sell to the nation and implement when they come to power.

Were that the case, there would be no need to “assassinate” individuals, since the party itself, and the ideals it represented, would be undamaged, with new leadership ready to step in.

Liza has more thoughts about Bhutto as a feminist icon for the developing world. Juan Cole has analysis of what this means for Pakistan and the United States. Both are well worth a read.

And I’ll echo Adil Najam’s sentiments: Today, in shock, I can think only of Benazir Bhutto the human being. Tomorrow, maybe, I will think of politics.

Students who oppose the institution of martial law in Pakistan have a blog. And it’s well worth a read.